Overused Names in YA?

The list of the most popular baby names of 2014 in Canada was released recently: Olivia and Liam. I'm not crazy about Liam, but I love Olivia -- the little mouse girl from Great Mouse Detective! -- but I feel like I can never use it because of how popular it's become.

I don't mind unusual names for fantasy/sci-fi. Preferably I can read it (and I'm usually quite good at reading obscure names).

What I don't like is when a generic novel that is not in a fantasy world has unconventional names. If it is based in US/ Europe /Earth give them a fairly ordinary name. I don't mean a lack of effort, but nothing that stands out as silly in that situation.

If it sounds like they should be on a distant planet covered mostly by desert or has a name that would suit a sorcerer and you have them gallivanting on earth I just don't find that believable/ doesn't draw me in. Fair enough if they aren't from earth though

I'm getting a little tired of seeing little boys named Ben, Jack, Sam or Charlie. Not just in YA, but in movies, MG, romance what have you. If someone has son, younger brother or cousin that's a boy, often that's what they're named.

Sage said:

Anything that can be shorted to Cat or Kat.

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This. Oh my goodness this. Those names have to be one of my biggest pet peeves ever. It's gotten to the point I'll literally put down a book if the main character has a name like this.

I haven't read through all of the posts yet, but I'm assuming someone has mentioned those weird names that are symbols as to what a character is supposed to be. Forgive me, I don't know what the correct term for that is. But in most cases, the character's role is made so blatantly obvious by their name I want to throw the book across the room. Names like "Light" and "Sky" or how about "Honor" or "Justice?" Let's go the other way too. How about names like "Darken" or "Fell?"
Why bother reading the book if I already know what's going to happen by reading the character's name?

I know that people have weird names in real life. I'm lamented to say I personally met someone who willingly named her son "Rocket," so I know stuff like that happens all the time. It's just that there's such a disproportionate amount of regular character names in YA it seems.

Or maybe it's confirmation bias? Who knows?

I don't know if this has been said before, but Ash.

Astrid. I might have posted this before, but it is my pet peeve.

paintitreadbooks said:

I don't know if this has been said before, but Ash.

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Really? Dang, and I was thinking of using this.

Sage said:

Anything that can be shorted to Cat or Kat.

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Heh. I have an old thing that I wrote in high school. The characters are: Kitty, Katie, Katherine, Kate and Katya.

Alex or variations thereof.